Manipulated PDF exploits Adobe Acrobat flaws

[Alexander Turcic]

Security specialist David Kierznowski published an article revealing two possible backdoor techniques for fully patched versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Professional. It includes everything a wannabe hacker needs to know to exploit your computer: proof of concept code and backdoored PDF documents.

The first attack is simple and affects both Adobe Reader and Adobe Professional. It involves adding a malicious link into the PDF document. Once the document is opened, the user's browser is automatically launched and the link is accessed. At this point it is obvious that any malicious code be launched. It is interesting to note that both Adobe 6 & 7 did not warn me before launching these URLs.

The second attack involves utilising Adobe's ADBC (Adobe Database Connectivity) and Web Services support.

At least as a temporarily solution you may want to switch to one of the alternative PDF Readers out there, which are, from what I've heard, not exploitable this way.

Related: Adobe Acrobat subject to remote exploit

[via Full Disclosure Mailing List]

[arivero]

But it is not true, isnt it? I mean, we took some time with this and both in acrobat reader and xdef we were asked before to launch a link.

Wait... that was for EXEC launchs. So Acrobat HTML launchs do not ask? Yep, indeed they do not.